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Saturday, October 6, 2012

Still Getting The Bugs Out

No, this is not about those rotten stink bugs.

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We won the war against them living in the Journey after getting infested with them when we had it stored in a county park in our pre fulltime days.  Thankfully we have not seen any more in the last several months.  Marti sleeps much better at night.

No the “bugs” I talking about are the little problems that all RVs have from being assembled by human hands. 

Usually every new RV has some bugs, maybe a drawer that doesn’t close right, or an adjustment needed on a slide, or something like that.  Most bugs are taken care of after the first year or so, the RV becomes very reliable.

After over five years of ownership, I have recently corrected two bugs that cropped up from sloppy assembly at the factory.

The first was a piece of trim in the bathroom.  It came loose and was falling off.  Looking at the trim which ran from the floor to the top of the door, it was attached by one little nail (brad)!

Could the bean counters try to save lots of money by using just one nail instead of several, or was the worker putting on the trim stayed out too late the night before?

No matter, I had to fix it.  A quick touch of my drill and three wood screws later, the trim will never come loose again. :c)

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The next bug has been perplexing me for quite a while.  It was concerning one of my basement compartment doors.  Every once and a while this compartment would get wet and I could not find any leaks.  It wasn’t something I noticed before we went full time, but now that we have and have driven in some rain (lots!), moisture showed up too often.

I looked at the door and noticed it did not exactly line up with the body.  It looked like it was slightly ajar when closed tightly.

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Thinking about it, I figured maybe the gasket wasn’t closing tightly, so I thought maybe there was an adjustment on the latch.  Looking at the latch, there was no way for an adjustment to be made.

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So I looked at the pocket where the latch is supposed to lock in tight to see if it could be adjusted.

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No adjustment is available either.  Looking at it closely, it seemed crooked.  I looked closer.

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The assembler at the factory missed the screw hole with the screw causing the pocket to not be able to hold the latch and the compartment door in tight like it was designed to.

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I loosened the top screw and got out my handy drill and drilled a new hole in the correct place for the screw.

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Putting the screw in the new hole, the pocket lined up like it was supposed to.

Now the compartment door is tight and lines up right, just in time for us to drive in some more rain.

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If you noticed the rust on the metal behind the pocket, that’s an ongoing bug that I have been working on.  Winnebago does not do a good job on priming the metal around the compartments, which I have to sand down, prime and repaint.  Good thing I’m retired and have the time to work on that.

Thanks for visiting and feel free to leave a comment.

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17 comments:

  1. We're still in the stage where the dealer has to fix it. Problem like you I'm doing the better job and the dealer gets the credit. Be Safe and Enjoy!

    It's about time.

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  2. Stink bugs. We still have some that show up. They've come from PA to OH to IN to WI, and finally to MN. We are amazed by the fact that they seem to be indestructible. We've caught them and put them in a sealed used water bottle, left them in overnight, just to find them still alive the next day. Sheesh.

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  3. Seems like every time you fix one, two more pop up. Wouldn't retirement be empty without something to do?

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  4. If you run out of things to fix, Marti can probably hire you out to fix other folks' little bugs. Eventually you'll get your own taken care of and need something else to do.

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  5. Keep working on those bugs. Pretty soon you will be an exterminator.

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  6. I saw an article in USA today about someone bringing an infestation of stink bugs to Texas in an RV. Guess who I thought of? That rust problem in the compartments was one of my biggest complaints with our Suncruiser.

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  7. You want to come over and work on our coach? We definitely have a few things that need attention.

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  8. I had both of those problems with the Meridian:( The trim was loose in a number of places. Their quality control could be a lot better.

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  9. That's what Jim's been doing - fixing odds and ends on Jan and Bill's new rig. (Well besides installing the clean dump.) Everything else was just poor workmanship or "cost savings". Keeps you guys out of trouble.

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  10. Nice catch and fix on the bin latch. You have to wonder how the assembly guy could miss that??

    I just had a small flange installed on the bottom of a slide as the factory just forgot to install it altogether.

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  11. Wow you are handy...always nice to be able to make those kind of repairs, great job!

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  12. Ahhhh the epic battle of Man vs RV continues!!!

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  14. Let me try this again without the typo :-(

    After seemingly taking the summer off, the stink bugs are back in VA .... and here we'd done such a good job of getting rid of them. Now, we're going to have to start all over again!

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  15. Glad you are getting your "bugs" under control. We are still plagued here in central PA with stink bugs, though.

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  16. Good job on the bin door, but, really, I'm surprised it took you five years to put in a few more nails. :-D

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  17. I think we just found a stink bug in NC! They are pretty ugly, aren't they?

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